Fort Montgomery Elementary School

Character Education

Character Development

Can we all get along?

Prevent
bullying for young children through understanding

What
is bullying?

Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among
school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential
to be repeated, over time. Both children
who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.Bullying includes actions
such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or
verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.

In
order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:

An Imbalance of Power: Children who bully use their power, such as
physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity, to
control or harm others. Power imbalances
can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same
people.

Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or
have the potential to happen more than once.

Early
childhood often marks the first opportunity for young children to interact with
each other. Between the ages of 3 and 5, kids are learning how to get along with
each other, cooperate, share, and understand their feelings. Young children may be aggressive and act out
when they are angry or don’t get what they want, but this is not bullying. Still, there are ways to help young children.

Parents,
school staff, and other adults can help young children develop skills for
getting along with others in age-appropriate ways:

Model positive ways for young
children to make friends. For example, practice pleasant
ways that children can ask to join others in play and take turns in games; coach
older children to help reinforce these behaviors; praise children for
appropriate behavior; help young children understand friendly behaviors.

Help young children learn the
consequences of certain actions in terms they can understand. For example,
say “if you don't share, other children may not want to play with you.”
Encourage young children to tell an adult if they are treated in a way that
makes them feel uncomfortable, upset or unhappy, or if they witness other
children being harmed.

Set clear rules for behavior and
monitor children's interactions carefully. Step in quickly to stop
aggressive behavior or redirect it before it occurs.

Use age-appropriate consequences
for aggressive behavior. Young children should be encouraged
to say "I'm sorry" whenever they hurt a peer, even accidentally. The
apology should also be paired with an action. For example, young children could
help rebuild a knocked over block structure or replace a torn paper or crayons
with new ones.

When children enter school, they
encounter a wider community of new relationships.They are still learning social skills but
need help in making good choices in the way they relate to others.Sometimes children in K-2 can be mean to
others.This is often motivated by
immature reactions from a child who is still in the self-centered stage of
social development.They need to be
taught how to get along with others and that other people have feelings,
different experiences, different likes and dislikes and that if just fine.

When does
being mean become bullying?All
potentially mean actions become bullying when they create an imbalance of power and are repeated over time.Bullying in the elementary grades includes:

Physical bullying:

Hitting,
kicking, or pushing someone, or even just threatening to do it

Stealing,
hiding or ruining someone's things

Making
someone do physical things he or she doesn’t want to do

Verbal bullying:

Name-calling

Teasing

Insulting

Relationship bullying:

Refusing
to talk to someone

Spreading
lies or rumors about someone

Making
someone do anythings he or she doesn't want to do

How can we help?

Friendship
building and anti-bullying can be taught through personal discussion, group
discussion, modeling, the use of creative web sites and through children’s
literature. At FMES we celebrate different character traits monthly. In September, the character trait is "Responsibility." We use children's literature to help guide our conversations around this theme. Click here for a list of titles to support this theme.

The
following are websites that give direction, information and are a good source
for discussion:

NetSmartz Workshop is an interactive,
educational program of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
(NCMEC) that provides age-appropriate resources to help teach children how to
be safer on and offline. The program is
designed for children ages 5-17, parents and guardians, educators, and law
enforcement. With resources such as
videos, games, activity cards, and presentations, NetSmartz entertains while it
educates

“When things are going great with our friends, life
is good. When things are going not-so-great, life can turn super-crummy,
super-fast. Many of you wrote to us to share your experiences and questions
about what happens when friends fight.”

Everybody
needs friends. You can feel very sad and
lonely if you don't have someone to play with and be with - it happens to
everybody sometimes. Here are some ideas
to help you in making friends and keeping friends. Having friends is also about how to be a
friend and how to be a friend to yourself.

Fort Montgomery Elementary School

SCHOOL TAGLINE HERE

The Highland Falls-Fort Montgomery Central School District endeavors to maintain a website that is accessible to all individuals, including those with visual, hearing or cognitive disabilities. If the format of any material on the District’s current website interferes with your ability to access information and you require an accommodation, please contact webmaster@hffmcsd.org. To enable us to respond in a manner most helpful to you, please indicate the nature of your accessibility concern, the preferred format in which to receive the material, the web address of the requested material, and your contact information.